Pete Seeger: Troubadour, Rabble Rouser

Pete Seeger's contribution to U.S. music began in the 1940s, extended through the 1960s folk-revival movement and is poised to reach well beyond his days.

Seeger died Monday in New York at age 94. Songs he wrote, co-wrote or adapted include "If I Had a Hammer," "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"—all of which crossed into the mainstream via hit versions recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary;
Jimmie Rodgers
; the Byrds; and the Kingston Trio, respectively. Seeger's reading of "We Shall Overcome" became an anthem of the civil-rights movement. For him, songs were unifying forces that transmitted passion and ideas; to attend his concerts was to participate in a community.

Along with
Woody Guthrie,
Lee Hays
and
Millard Lampell,
Seeger began performing in the early '40s as part of the Almanac Singers, a folk group staunchly supportive of unions, racial justice and religious equality. The group's recordings, which included sea chanteys, whaling ballads and rousing political numbers, reveal an often confrontational, always enthusiastic style.

Hounded for its communist affiliations, the Almanac Singers disbanded around the time Seeger was drafted in 1942. Hays and Seeger went on to form, with
Ronnie Gilbert
and
Fred Hellerman,
the Weavers, a folk phenomenon in the early '50s. The Weavers' reading of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene" topped Billboard for 13 weeks in 1950, and subsequent hits included "The Midnight Special," "The Wreck of the John B," a few Guthrie tunes, and the spiritual "Kumbaya."

After refusing to testify in 1955 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hays and Seeger were banned from appearing on radio and television, but a recording of a sold-out 1955 Christmas Eve concert at Carnegie Hall, released in 1957, revitalized the Weavers' career and boosted the folk-revival movement.

Seeger did not appear on network TV until 1967, when he was a guest on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." (Still, his performance of his antiwar song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" was cut.) However, in 1965 he began hosting "Rainbow Quest," a tiny UHF TV show broadcast out of Newark, N.J., that was dedicated to folk music. Its viewership was limited, but appearances by
Johnny Cash,
Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi
John Hurt
and others served as a testimony to the respect Seeger engendered.

A hero among folk revivalists in Greenwich Village, Seeger was an early champion of
Bob Dylan,
whom he first invited in 1963 to perform at the Newport Folk Festival that Seeger helped launch. During the 1965 festival, Mr. Dylan's decision to play amplified rock and blues caused Seeger some consternation; he was later accused of trying to terminate the Dylan performance. Seeger claimed he objected to the volume, which obscured the lyrics.

Seeger proved an inspiration for subsequent generations as well, as he continued to perform into the '90s, often with Guthrie's son Arlo. In 2006,
Bruce Springsteen
released "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," a collection of songs popularized by Seeger. During President
Barack Obama
's
inauguration celebrations in 2009, Seeger, his grandson Tao Rodriquez-Seeger and Mr. Springsteen led a sing-along of Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," with Seeger, as he so often did, feeding the lyrics to the audience.

Troubadour, rabble rouser, thorn in the side of the bloated and complacent, recipient of the National Medal of Arts, American idealist and family man, Seeger maintained what Mr. Springsteen called his "nasty optimism" until late in life. In 2011, he marched in Manhattan in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, talking reminder of all of America's history. He'd be a living archive of America's music and conscience," Mr. Springsteen said in May 2009 during celebrations at Madison Square Garden honoring Seeger's 90th birthday. The event featured dozens of musicians influenced by Seeger.

"The idea of using music to try to get the world together is now all over the place," said Seeger in 2008. That is his enduring legacy.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.

One does not have to be "bloated and complacent" to view Pete Seeger's life and career with a certain amount of skepticism. He was a dedicated Stalinist, from his membership in the Young Communist League in the 1930's until at least the 1980's, yet no one, even at the WSJ, seems to find that worth commenting on. He also seems to have used family connections to advance his career, which is OK, too. It was through those connections that he got a job working for Alan Lomax at the Smithsonian. Lomax was the researcher who had traveled and collected early American folk music. Seeger and his fellow musicians popularized that music. He deserves credit for that. But before anyone, including Jim Fusilli, goes overboard praising Pete Seeger, a question to be asked is how would he be memorialized today if his political views had been as far to the Right as they were to the Left?

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.